Vodafone India has commenced the rollout of its 4G network in earnest, with plans to commence services in the first city covered on Monday.
The operator's 1800-MHz LTE network will be available in Kochi, Kerala from December 14.
The company will offer a free 4G upgrade to all its customers in the city along with a 4G SIM, and has introduced data packs including a trial pack with 120MB of data for just 29 rupees ($0.43) to a pack with a hefty 20GB of data for 2,499 rupees.
Vodafone next plans to expand the rollout to cover important metro areas including Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru and Kolkata as part of the first phase.
With the launch Vodafone will become the first operator in Kerala to offer 2G, 3G and 4G services simultaneously.
Vodafone India's business head for Kerala Abhijit Kishore said Kerala is a focus market for the operator, which has invested more than 7 billion rupees in the region over the past 18 months.
“Kerala is a significant growth market for Vodafone India with data revenue growing over 75% annually, which is well above the national average,” he said.
“We will soon expand our 4G service to Trivandrum and Kozhikode and continue to pursue our customer centric strategy of catering to the evolving needs of retail and enterprise customers for better and smarter solutions for both voice and data.”
Vodafone has committed to investing more than 130 billion rupees to expand its Indian networks and pursue ambitions of entering a payments bank venture.